Richard Hoffman

Penitentiary

One day
people will come to tour this place —
walls within walls, on top
bright slinkies of razorwire,
lighthouse corners,
sentries, (an inverted fortress,
search-lights sweeping inward),
enmity injurious beyond
calculus, down generations,
— schoolbuses will wait in a row
while children are taught about laws
by then archaic
or else there will have been no future.